Crystal
by lovegood27
Summary: Helena Ravenclaw loved the Baron. She wanted to marry him when he asked her. But there was something else she wanted more and this craving for the thing made her feel unworthy and impure. Her mother's diadem.


"Do you like it?"

Helena Ravenclaw took the ring from his hands. It was truly beautiful. It was made of silver, with little sapphire studs and a flower in the middle. Made of crystal. In the centre of the flower stood a tiny white pearl. It looked so delicate and pure.

This ring was made of all of Helena's favourite jewels. Sapphires and pearls.

Crystals.

No one counted them as jewels but they should. They were like jewels but more natural and white. People would say that's a bad thing but white symbolised purity. Something that Helena herself had not been since she had found out her mother's diadem.

All her life, she felt like she was not good enough for her mother. Rowena Ravenclaw was one of the founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, considered as one of the greatest witches of the age. She was beautiful, kind, thoughtful, and incredibly intelligent. And wise. Because of the diadem.

As a student who had been sorted into Ravenclaw, Helena had been taught that wisdom was the most important thing to mankind.

"Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure," her mother frequently told her. Helena felt like it was. But she felt like she wasn't smart enough. Not wise enough. Not as wise as her mother was.

She longed to have the diadem for herself, to steal it from her mother and be greater than her. She kept those longings to herself, because they made her feel like a wicked person. Wicked and impure.

Helena looked at the ring in her hands. How could she wear something like this? It was so beautiful and pure, it was hard to believe it had been created by goblins. This looked like something that had been given by nature herself.

She could not wear something like that.

She, who craved only her mother's diadem and her wisdom.

But looking into the face of the Baron, so full of hope, she could not bring herself to tell him so.

"It's beautiful," she stammered out.

"Well then," the Baron took her hands. Helena knew what was coming. She had been expecting it for months. "Will you marry me?"

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "But I'm not ready yet."

"But do you love me?," he persisted.

"Yes I do," she said truthfully. "But I'm not ready for marriage yet. I may be in a year or two."

"I will be waiting," the Baron said. "Keep the ring."

Little did they know that marriage was not what their love was going to end in.

Consumed by unbearable craving for the diadem, Helena stole it and ran away to Albania, where she had visited many times with her mother. There was a wood there that she had loved when she went there, and her first instinct was to go to that wood and hide there with the diadem temporarily.

Rowena Ravenclaw may not have noticed her diadem was missing, even though it was one of her prized possessions, but she could hardly not notice her daughter's absence. When she discovered that her diadem was missing, she started to panic, realising that Helena must have ran away with the diadem. She asked the Baron if he knew where she had gone, but he said he didn't know, though he offered to help find her.

"She might have gone to Albania," Rowena told him. "She always loved it there, it's the kind of place she'd go to."

She told him the whereabouts of the wood and sent him there to bring Helena back.

The Baron went to the wood, searching for Helena.

Meanwhile, Helena had hidden the diadem in the hollow of a tree which she had marked with an X and gone to a village nearby to get some food.

When she came back, however, she found the Baron sitting by the tree. She was relieved when she saw that he had not found the diadem.

"What are you doing here?," she asked. The Baron got up.

"Your mother sent me here to bring you back," the Baron said. "She's very ill, nearing death, and she wants to see you again." It was a lie but the Baron thought that if he told Helena her mother was dying, she would go back and soon, they could get married and everything would turn out right.

Unfortunately, it was not like that.

"That's not true," Helena said. "Mother was fine when I left a few days ago, you're just saying that so I'll come home. Well I won't come. No matter what you say."

"Helena, please," he said desperately. "I want you to come back."

"Why?," Helena asked, a little angry now. "Why do you want me to come back? So you can marry me and we can live together happily forever?"

"Exactly," the Baron said, now angry too. "You said you loved me. If you really loved me, you wouldn't have left me. If you really love me, you would come back."

"I do love you!," Helena said. "But I can't live in my mother's shadow anymore. I will never feel good enough for her. Come to live with me here if you want. I'll marry you."

"You're asking me to leave behind my entire life for you," the Baron said angrily. "You may not want to stay with your family but I do. You have no one here in Albania. You have nowhere to live, you are a complete stranger to the people of Albania. Why can you not just come back and live with me? You don't have to live with your mother, and we could be happy together."

They could.

But he didn't understand. What if her mother never forgave her for stealing the diadem, which she would surely have discovered by now was missing? What if the other founders found out and the word spread? She would be shunned by people forever. She couldn't bear that. But here in Albania, no one knew her history or where she came from. She could start a new life. If only the Baron could come too, she could be happy here in Albania.

"You don't understand," she said, her voice shaking. "There are things you don't know. My mother may not welcome me back. I have to stay here. I can start a new life here, why don't you just come and live with me too?"

"Because you are asking too much of me!," the Baron shouted, his temper in full gear. "I love you, Helena, but you're telling me to leave my life behind so I can come and live with you in a wood!"

"If you don't even love me that much, maybe I shouldn't marry you because you obviously don't even care about me!," Helena shouted back.

What happened next happened to quickly for anyone to properly register what had happened. But the Baron had a sword and suddenly, it was on the ground lying next to Helena, who had a dark red wound in her side.

Filled with remorse, the Baron took his sword and plunged it straight into his heart.

Their bodies were discovered a few days later, and they were buried together.

But the ring, which the Baron had hidden in the tree's hollow before he killed himself, was never found.


End file.
